The NSA Will Destroy the Bulk Phone Records It Collected

One month after a law was passed ending the NSA’s bulk collection of US phone records, the director of intelligence announced today that records previously collected by the spy agency will be destroyed, according to the Associated Press.

The director of national intelligence did not say when the records would be destroyed, but noted that they must be retained as long as lawsuits around the collection program are ongoing.

After the program was ruled illegal by a court in May, lawmakers passed a bill last month that put an end to the NSA’s bulk phone data collection by having telecoms store the records instead. The legislation would still allow the government to access the records, by obtaining a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act any time it wishes to view them, but would limit this access to records that are relevant to a national security investigation.

The bill gives the NSA a 180-day grace period to end its collection program and develop a new system for requesting permission to access records from the phone companies. But it was always unclear what would happen to the millions of records the NSA had already collected. The director of national intelligence said today that the spy agency would cease using the existing records by November 29, after which they would be destroyed once pending lawsuits have ended.